Don't know if we have a thread like this one over here on the garden thread, but thought we should. Seems like a great place on BYC for folks to just chat about their current canning project and recipes they use, etc.

This past week I've been canning sweet corn, which we do in a steam canner instead of the pressure canner, which is a little different than most folks(we add acid with a thick slice of green mater at the top of the jar). Also canning hot pepper butter, slumgulleon(just a family name for throwing all the extra veggies into a skillet, cooking them down and thickening with cornmeal before using it as a sauce or gravy over something else), a small batch of green beans and some odds and ends of chickens that I've culled throughout the year and didn't get a chance to can with the larger batches of chicken.

Next week we'll probably can more sweet corn and then start moving into tomatoes. For tomatoes we'll just can up sauce, juice and diced tomatoes, as well as some salsa if I can access the right kind of tomatoes....mine were all pretty small this year and won't yield enough to do what I want.

Was discussing with the deer hunters in the family about really using more of the deer we harvest this year so that nothing goes to waste...more of the organs, more of the scraps of meat on the carcass that we would normally give to the dog, etc. I'd like to grind up the organ meat this year and maybe mix it with some pork sausage and spices to make a burger we will can up for use in spaghetti and other recipes calling for ground meats. The other meat we normally just cube and can as per normal, without grinding first.

Last year I cut up the carcass and boiled all the bones down in a huge stock pot and canned up that broth, picking all the meat from the bones and adding it to the broth as well. That makes a great soup base or gravy base later on. It's also a good way to get a lot more fat into the broth from the bone marrow that we wouldn't ordinarily get to glean.

Will add some pics here as we go along in our canning this year. Feel free to add to the thread with pics, recipes or just chat about what you are canning up throughout the year.

For the first time in many years we will not be canning anything from the garden. I will put up some apple sauce, apple pie filling and grape jelly though. And it may be a few years before we even plant a garden This year is so busy trying to get the other place finished, then next year will be getting the current place torn down and getting ready for new construction, financing, land work etc, etc... Then the following year we hope to start building the new house.

We really can't rely on a freezer here as the power goes off so frequently(in the broad daylight on a sunny day, even....we assume someone sneezed and shut down the power grid when that happens ) and sometimes up to 2 wks at a time.

It's a real pain in the patootey, but we are used to living without utilities so we don't suffer too much, except that I've lost a good amount of work and money due to that happening, so now we put everything in a jar that we possibly can. It's a lot more work and equipment involved but once it's in the jar we don't have to worry about much and it keeps longer than in the freezer as well.

For the first time in many years we will not be canning anything from the garden. I will put up some apple sauce, apple pie filling and grape jelly though. And it may be a few years before we even plant a garden This year is so busy trying to get the other place finished, then next year will be getting the current place torn down and getting ready for new construction, financing, land work etc, etc... Then the following year we hope to start building the new house.

We will garden again.

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It feels weird, doesn't it? I have done that a couple of years in my life during transitional times and it always feels weird....like you've lost something and haven't found it. Left me jangling around and feeling lonely for my garden.

My car is in the shop right now, but when it comes back, I'm heading for Ohio to buy a couple bushel of peaches. In the meantime, I found some deer stew meat in a couple gallon ziploc bags that I forgot to can last fall, so I will get that done. 10 cockerels are getting processed this Saturday. I will be canning stock and meat from those next week.

This is the first year that I've had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from the garden available to can. Well, I take that back...I will have some new potatoes to can once I dig them. But that's it. I'll have to buy beans, peppers and tomatoes from Ohio too. Across the river, there are U-picks all up and down. I can get a bushel of canning tomatoes for $5 each.

My car is in the shop right now, but when it comes back, I'm heading for Ohio to buy a couple bushel of peaches. In the meantime, I found some deer stew meat in a couple gallon ziploc bags that I forgot to can last fall, so I will get that done. 10 cockerels are getting processed this Saturday. I will be canning stock and meat from those next week.

This is the first year that I've had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from the garden available to can. Well, I take that back...I will have some new potatoes to can once I dig them. But that's it. I'll have to buy beans, peppers and tomatoes from Ohio too. Across the river, there are U-picks all up and down. I can get a bushel of canning tomatoes for $5 each.

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@journey11, you'll have to tell me where you are getting those cheap tomatoes, PLEASE!!! Your garden sounds like mine, so we are buying more than ever this year....we need peppers and maters the most and I used to buy some over in OH, across from Ravenswood, WV, many yrs ago but now I can't remember where and how to get there. Does that sound close to where you buy?